BuzzFeed UK appoints new senior writer

BuzzFeed UK is continuing to expand its editorial team with the announcement that Tom Chivers, currently assistant comment editor at The Telegraph, will join the outlet as a senior writer in January.

The appointment comes as UK editor Luke Lewis plans to focus on developing the news side of BuzzFeed UK over the next year.

"Up until now, we've hired general reporters, now we want to build a beat structure," Lewis told Journalism.co.uk.

"We want to hire an LGBT editor, [and] we're thinking about other beats such as economics, housing."

BuzzFeed has more than doubled its UK audience in the past year, now reporting 20 million unique visitors, up from 8 million at the end of last year, said Lewis.

Chivers, who will be covering current affairs, science and "ideas", joins newly appointed Emily Ashton, who is leaving The Sun to take on the role of BuzzFeed political correspondent in January.

BuzzFeed has also recently hired Robert Colvile, formerly of the Telegraph, as UK News Director.

Lewis also plans to build an investigative journalism team in the UK, which he said is "very close to becoming a reality".

In the US, the oultet already has a growing investigations team headed by ex-ProPublica senior editor Mark Schoofs.

"We want to bring some of that culture over here," Lewis explained, adding that the first step is to hire a head of investigations, who will then build a team based in London.

"Where we see the future of BuzzFeed really is in these very ambitious and aggressive investigations," he said.

Another area Lewis is looking at potentially expanding in the next year is BuzzFeed UK's regional coverage, with potential to hire regional editors at some point, although nothing is yet confirmed.

He said stories with a "regional identity" have been "absolutely huge" for BuzzFeed UK as they are "inherently shareable".

A 'new formats' team headed by Tom Phillips was announced in October, created with a view to build new tools for presenting stories as well as further developing existing ones.

Lewis said "enhancing" the outlet's coverage of the UK general election in May 2015 is an "open goal" where these new tools might come into play.

"There's so many ways to tell that story and I think there's certainly an opportunity to do something innovative and different," he said.

• BuzzFeed's deputy editor Jim Waterson and editorial director Tom Phillips will be at Journalism.co.uk's news:rewired  conference in February, speaking about new approaches to election coverage and visual storytelling respectively. Don't miss out on tickets!

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